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Friday, April 03, 2009

BB (aka Black Beauty) and Her Newborn Twin Girls Very Early this Morning

During the winter our sheep eat organic homegrown hay supplemented with natural grains—usually oats and alfalfa pellets tossed with some dried molasses (yes, that would be livestock candy), along with kelp, a calcium mineral mix, garlic and onion powder, and diatomaceous earth which is a natural wormer.

It's especially important for pregnant ewes to have grain during the last six weeks of their five month gestation period because as the growing babies inside them become bigger, the ewes' four stomachs become smaller, and it's physically impossible for them to ingest all the calories they need from hay alone.

We feed grain in the late afternoon or early evening because I once read that will promote daylight births. So far this year it isn't working. For the second night in a row, I went down to the barn at 2am to do a preg check and found a new set of twins, this time BB's. I didn't get back to sleep until around 5:30, but mother and those stylish black babies are doing just fine.

21 comments:

Ok, your pictures are really making me want to get a lapful of baby lambs to hug. What cuties! And what an assortment of colors. The letter is F this year, isn't it? Should we all start thinking of F names?

Hazarding an incredibly non-fact-based guess here, but sheep are prey animals so maybe it's safer for them to give birth under cover of darkness?Or not...Whatever, they are adorable. Lucky you to be able to go pet them whenever you want.

I'd been told that if you feed later in the morning they will lamb in the daytime. I feed around 10am. The latest baby was born at 11:30pm, the earliest at 7am. Of course we're only talking about five ewes but for me it seems to be working...

Oh my goodness. I go away for a week, and all of a sudden, you have baby lambs. I didn't think I'd ever see anything as cute as the little black baby, and then I scrolled down to Annette's babies, and saw the Chocolate and.... "Butter Pecan"...

C'est adorable. Gor-geous. Conratulations on all the healthy babies, and I hope that one lost little newbie imprints with someone soon.

Well, one of my Shetlands had her first lamb at 1:00 yesterday afternoon (the warmest day we've had since last October) - and had lamb #2 several hours later! All three ewes who have lambed so far (one to go) have done so during daylight hours, and in nice weather. For what it's worth, I grain morning and evening.

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